Steven Soderbergh Bio
Steven Andrew Soderbergh (born January 14, 1963) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh later drew acclaim for formally inventive films made within the studio system. His directorial breakthrough, the indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) lifted him into the public spotlight as a notable presence in the film industry.
Over a career spanning more than four decades, Soderbergh has built a varied body of work that includes crime dramas, heist films, biopics, thrillers, and experimental low-budget productions. His films have grossed over US$2.2 billion worldwide and have earned fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning five. He is known for his restless creativity, his willingness to handle nearly every technical role on set, and his use of pseudonyms when he shoots or edits his own films.
Early Life and Background
Steven Andrew Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Mary Ann Bernard and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, a university administrator and educator. He has Swedish, Irish, and Italian roots, and his paternal grandfather immigrated to the United States from Stockholm. As a child, Soderbergh moved with his family to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he spent much of his adolescence, and later relocated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after his father became Dean of Education at Louisiana State University.
He attended the Louisiana State University Laboratory School for high school, graduating before moving to Hollywood to pursue professional filmmaking. As a teenager, Soderbergh discovered his love of cinema and began directing short films with Super 8 and 16 mm cameras, laying the technical foundation for his later experimental approach to the craft.
In his first industry job, Soderbergh worked as a game show score keeper and cue card holder before finding work as a freelance film editor. During this period he directed the concert video 9012Live for the rock band Yes in 1985, a project that earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Best Music Video, Long Form.
Path to Celebrity
Soderbergh’s transition from regional short films and music videos to feature directing came with a cross-country drive and a single screenplay. After returning to Baton Rouge, he wrote Sex, Lies, and Videotape on a legal pad during an eight-day road trip. The script, which follows a troubled man who videotapes women discussing their lives and sexuality, was submitted to the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.
At the festival, at age 26, Soderbergh became the youngest solo director to win the Palme d’Or, the top prize at Cannes. The film was made on a $1.2 million budget and went on to gross $36.7 million worldwide. Its success established Soderbergh as a major new voice in American cinema and was later selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Film critic Roger Ebert famously called Soderbergh the poster boy of the Sundance generation, and his sudden rise had him described as a sensation and a prodigy. The acclaim that followed his debut opened the door to a series of subsequent projects, even as his next several features struggled to find an audience.
Steven Soderbergh Career
Early Career (1989–1997)
Soderbergh’s directorial debut was followed by a series of low-budget films that underperformed at the box office. In 1991 he directed Kafka, a biographical film of Franz Kafka starring Jeremy Irons that returned only a fraction of its budget and drew mixed reviews. Two years later, he released the drama King of the Hill (1993), set during the Great Depression and based on the memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, which again underperformed commercially but was praised by critics.
He followed these efforts with The Underneath (1995), a remake of Robert Siodmak’s 1949 film noir Criss Cross, which grossed just over half a million dollars against a $6.5 million budget. Soderbergh has since called the film dead on arrival and described its production as his lowest point. In 1996 he wrote, directed, starred in, composed, and shot Schizopolis, a comedy that he later described as his artistic wake-up call, and he also released a small edited version of the Spalding Gray monologue film Gray’s Anatomy during the same period.
Breakthrough (1998–2008)
Soderbergh’s reemergence began in 1998 with Out of Sight, a stylized adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel written by Scott Frank and starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The film was widely praised and launched a long artistic partnership between Clooney and Soderbergh. He followed it with the crime caper The Limey (1999) and then, in 2000, released two major studio films in the same year: the biopic Erin Brockovich, starring Julia Roberts in her Academy Award-winning role, and the social drama Traffic, written by Stephen Gaghan.
Both Erin Brockovich and Traffic were nominated at the 2001 Academy Awards, making Soderbergh the first director to be nominated for Best Director for two different films in the same year since Michael Curtiz in 1938. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Traffic. In 2001 he also directed Ocean’s Eleven, a reboot of the 1960 Rat Pack film, which became his highest-grossing movie to date, earning more than $450 million worldwide.
He continued with Ocean’s Twelve (2004), the political HBO series K Street (2003), and Ocean’s Thirteen (2007), which concluded what became known as the Ocean’s trilogy. In 2008 he released Che, a four-hour epic in two parts starring Benicio del Toro as Ernesto Che Guevara, and shot The Girlfriend Experience, casting adult film star Sasha Grey in the lead role.
Notable Works and Milestones
Signature works from this period include the Ocean’s trilogy, Erin Brockovich, and Traffic, the last of which earned Soderbergh his Academy Award for Best Director. He also won the Palme d’Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival for Sex, Lies, and Videotape and was elected first Vice President of the Directors Guild of America in 2002. His films during this era helped define a new wave of heist cinema and demonstrated his ability to move between indie sensibilities and large-scale studio productions.
Steven Soderbergh Award Nominations
Steven Soderbergh has earned a series of high-profile nominations across his career. At the 62nd Academy Awards, he received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay for Sex, Lies, and Videotape. At the 73rd Academy Awards, he was twice nominated for Best Director, for Erin Brockovich and Traffic, the first such double nomination since 1938. He has also received best director nominations at the Golden Globe Awards and the Directors Guild of America Awards in the same year, and his concert video 9012Live earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Best Music Video, Long Form.
Steven Soderbergh Awards Won
Soderbergh’s verified major awards include the Palme d’Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival for Sex, Lies, and Videotape, making him the youngest solo director to win the prize at age 26, and the Academy Award for Best Director at the 73rd Academy Awards for Traffic. He has also swept The Big Four critics awards (LAFCA, NBR, NYFCC, NSFC) for his work on Erin Brockovich and Traffic, joining a small group of directors to accomplish that feat.
Steven Soderbergh Family
Steven Andrew Soderbergh was born to Mary Ann Bernard and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, a university administrator and educator who served as Dean of Education at Louisiana State University. His paternal grandfather immigrated to the United States from Stockholm, giving the family Swedish, Irish, and Italian roots. Soderbergh has frequently honored his parents through the pseudonyms he uses on his own films, taking the cinematography credit Peter Andrews, his father’s given name, and the editing credit Mary Ann Bernard, his mother’s name.
Personal Life
Soderbergh married actress Betsy Brantley in 1989, and the couple had a daughter together before divorcing in 1994. He has been married to television personality Jules Asner since 2003, and he often credits her with influencing his female characters. Soderbergh has a daughter born in 2010 with a woman in Australia, born during a period of separation from Asner. He lives in New York City, where he also filmed his 2023 web series Command Z inside his own home.
